One of the curious, but also most predictable, responses to the Boston Marathon bombings from the Left has been the fervent expression — amounting nearly to a prayer — that the perpetrator or perpetrators of this act of mass murder be “homegrown,” preferably white, male, Christian, and conservative.

Why? Why does the Left prefer to have its terrorism served up by Timothy McVeigh rather than Durka Durka Mohammed Jihad? It’s an interesting question. That the Left exhibits this prejudice is, like Falstaff’s dishonesty, “gross as a mountain, open, palpable.”

David Sirota, writing at Salon, gives almost comic expression to the genre in an essay with the really special title “Let’s hope the Boston Marathon bomber is a white American.” Why does Mr. Sirota wish that the Boston murderer of 8-year-old boys be a white American? Because a spectral quality called “white male privilege” operates insidiously behind the scenes. If Timmy McVeigh blows up a government building, says Mr. Sirota, only he is blamed. If Mohammed does it, Muslims are likely to be “collectively slandered and/or targeted with surveillance or profiling (or worse).”

What do you think of that argument? I think it’s hooey. For one thing, categories like “white male privilege” are a sort of Leftist version of phlogiston: hypothetical explanatory devices that have the unfortunate attribute of not actually existing. For another, there’s plenty of “collective slander” of Christian fundamentalists (you know, those “bitter” small-towners who “cling to guns or religion”) going around.

A full anatomy of David Sirota’s hope for a great white villain would fill many pages. What I want to note at the moment, however, is how consonant it is with President Obama’s often noted reluctance to employ what Andrew McCarthy calls the “T-word” when commenting on episodes of mayhem and murder.

He doesn’t want to say “terrorism” when bombs go off and people die because, well, because people these days have an inexplicable tendency to think “Muslim outrage” when bombs explode and innocent people are maimed or murdered.

It is very odd. Most people are just not as Hume-ian as the president when it comes to discerning a link between “A” and “B.” Hume famously attacked the idea of causation, pointing out that just because “B” regularly has happened after “A” does not mean that “A” causes “B.” There might be a conjunction, Hume allowed, but to speak of causation is to speak presumptuously.

Logically, Hume had a point. But when it comes to what actually happens in the world, most people are, and rightly are, very imperfect Hume-ians. They observe connections. Then they draw conclusions. They observe (to take just a few recent examples):

People (but not people like David Sirota or Barack Obama) observe these events and they draw conclusions. Not all Muslims are terrorists, but these days, if you are a terrorist odds are pretty good you are a Muslim.

Remember the Beltway Sniper? The narrative--a narrative of some certainty, smugly announced--was a white guy, probably rural, gun owner and so on. Two black guys, one who changed his name to Muhammad, and the young guy who sat at a table during his trial writing "jihad" and drawing pictures of airplanes flying into tall buildings were in fact the perpetrators. Desperate to make the tenets of their religion become truth. As it is, it is only dogma, but it gives these strangely focused people some explanation for their lives I suppose, if not some explanation for their smugness.

Sirota is a privileged white guy playing the great white savior role complaining about white male privilege. Privilege that doesn't exist now, if it ever did. Fewer white males in college, law school and medical school. Declining incomes for non-college educated white males, etc, etc.

Sirota is a bigot hating, based oni skin color, those like himself and those less fortunate than himself. Reminds me of David Chappell's Black White Supremist, except not funny.

And yet he'll keep trotting out the same narrative every time something like this happens. So will the SPLC. So will the President. Talk about bitter clingers. They cling to their comfortable assumptions about How Things Are In America, all evidence to the contrary.

I'm still amazed, (freaked out actually) that a majority of Americans elected Obama, and re-elected Obama as President. Whether they like it or not, they're an embarrassing bunch of fools who need come to grips with the damage they have done. Just calling a spade a spade.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the now-dead Boston Marathon bombing suspect was a student at Bunker Hill Community College and a Golden Gloves boxer who trained at Wai Kru mixed martial arts gym in Boston and competed in a national Golden Gloves competition. He also described himself as a “very religious” Muslim. Warning: I'm an old white guy who belongs to the Tea Party and owns a gun.

First, I agree that the 'report abuse' feature seems to have morphed into a game of tag. Read some and saw nothing wrong in(most of) the comments.

Second, the FBI is, after all, dometically focused and its emphasis narrow. I'm not sure how we get a totality of 24 incidents and 23 domestic---is that worldwide? I don't think I'm reading you right.

Thirdly, I would caution anyone to question the percentage strength of the data being offered. To wit, Nidal Hassan, assigned to 'workplace violence.' I'm afraid that information is no longer a tool, but a weapon for manipulation.

There are so many dang reported comments down below that I can't keep the discussion straight. I also can't reply to a reported comment. C'mon people, free speech means FREE speech.

To the commenators down below who are throwing around statistics....An FBI report looking at the period between 2002 and 2005 said that 24 recorded terrorist incidents happened in this period, and 23 of them were domestic. Of these 23 incidents, all but one “were committed by special interest extremists active in the animal rights and environmental movements.”

In the liberal mind set, putting the cart before the horse, the disdain before the evidence, means white privilege, which can't be proven, exists. It exists because liberals want it to exist, they have willed it into existence.

By the same token, a clear trend of Islamic terror one is reminded of every time one goes into a ball game in Cleveland or an airport in Athens or a mall in Delhi doesn't actually exist for a liberal. 9/11, the Mumbai attacks and thousands of others are willed out of existence and white militia terrorists are willed into existence.

The Dem Party, the greatest institution supposedly against racism in America, are the greatest purveyors of it. It is like an anti-prostitution pimp.

These smug idiots are blinded by their identity politics and moral relativism. Instead of spending time hoping it is a white male, why don't we focus on catching the perps? I know the lefties will want to coddle them and worry about their diet, I say enhanced interrogation techniques should be on the table from the get go.

Oh spare us! "A full anatomy of David Sirota’s hope... would fill many pages. What I want to note at the moment, however, is...blah...blah...blah." Pompous and pointless bluster, complete w/ a mandatory Shakespearean reference to establish Serious Intellectual Musing Practiced Here.

As that fictional white guy said, in a far from dishonest moment, ' We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Shallow.' We also don't need a Cliff Notes reference to Hume to make a deeply clichéd point about causation.

A trend in motion will continue until it's stopped and the Sirota's of the land don't give a damn about you or your horses. Worse, they have a much bigger megaphone than you do. Aside from bleating and self-pity, what do you all intend to do about it?

Surely you know better. Voting won't work -- too little, too late. The fix is in, the system is rotten, and waffle/haughty behavior/posing on moral high ground ain't gonna change a thing. Quaint notions of participatory democracy have no place in today's US unless you have a death wish.

You, maybe, and others, certainly, are also pinning your hopes on a three-time loser, a terminally clapped-out GOP that can't sell s**t to a toilet. What you're left with is an insipid variant of 'It matters not whether you win or lose but how you play the game'. That may be manna from heaven for Rapture loons and other zealots, but for the rest of us it's a catastrophe, so don't expect the thanks or support of a grateful nation.You become part of the problem, so go right ahead and vote yourselves into oblivion.

Meantime, the band plays on, an ugly sound dedicated to befuddled losers... let's call it the Titanic Gambit, an unfinished overture to At The River. Good luck.